


Fare Thee Well

by BadassCompany



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Destiel Becoming Canon On 5 November 2020 (Supernatural), Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadassCompany/pseuds/BadassCompany
Summary: Alternate finale. In which stories can change even God, Castiel is saved, and Team Free Will 2.0 live out what they fought for the right to love."Where once Heaven rang loud and clear with the words 'Dean Winchester is saved,' Earth now whispered 'Dean Winchester is loved.'"
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	Fare Thee Well

**Author's Note:**

> These are the broad strokes of how I would’ve written the finale. I can’t wait to read everyone else’s! Like Misha says, now we can write our own ending. This fandom has some of the most brilliant minds I’ve encountered, and while I’m not saying we forget about this family or these characters, I’m so excited about what new art we’ll go out into the world and create when we’re ready. 
> 
> I’ve wanted to write a goodbye letter to the Destiel and Supernatural fandom for a long time, but there was never a good time. Now is a good time. This show and its characters will stick with me, even if the ending isn’t what I would’ve chosen.

Before the light or the word, there was a void. A shadow. 

After aeons, the one story that kept you awake at night was the one that never ended how you wanted. After all of time, God was stuck on the Winchester boys. 

Well. You can't kill God...but you can teach him what we dream about. 

* * *

Where once Heaven rang loud and clear with the words _Dean Winchester is saved_ , Earth now whispered _Dean Winchester is loved._ Dean was ruined: Cas' words had planted something that bloomed painfully when he smiled. For the first time, he didn't see his scars as a tally of battles fought, but for the times he’d healed. But Cas was gone. 

Trying to save the world, one last time. Over the table, while they flipped through heavy tomes, surrounded by emptying bottles and brimming-up despair, they batted questions back and forth.

"Why did it go this way? What did Chuck want? He made the angels, who loved him, who followed his every order. They disappointed him. He left." Dean closed his eyes and tried not to think of John at that, of how the words 'I'm so proud of you' had felt like a bandaid over a gaping hole left by two decades out in the cold. "He made humans and wrote all that bullcrap about free will into the Bible. He made nature, then the gods, then hated them for stealing worshippers. We were his favourites because we broke his script but now all he wants is that same ending? Why? What is it all for? Entertainment?"

"Maybe. It would certainly explain his soft spot for Lucifer's rebellion. The element of surprise," Michael said, face sour. 

"I mean, why trap Amara to have free reign over all of creation if you don't care about any of it?"

"I guess he lost faith," Sam said, lip twitching into the ghost of a smirk. "Or he never cared in the first place."

Dean heard Cas' voice again. _Because you cared, I cared. I cared about you. I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack...but I cared about the whole world because of you._ He swallowed hard. "What if we could make him care?"

* * *

They lured Chuck to them with Michael’s help, a double bluff. 

A day before, they'd called Becky Rosen on an old number Sam found in one of the old FBI cellphones. 

"You knew him better than we did," Sam said. “You knew how he saw Supernatural.”

"Write him a new story," Dean said. "One that changes him."

She stayed up all the long, dark hours of the night, writing. Her email arrived in the morning. The body read: _I gave him a few girlfriends, gave him a few boyfriends. I made him learn guitar the hard way, and put in some of the good bits of Supernatural – no offence. But more than all that, I tried to give it a message. He's been using family, blood and love as plot devices for – well, ever, I guess. I tried to make him finally feel them. I won’t lie, it’s messy, but it's real._

* * *

It took everything they had. Sam chanting from the Book of the Damned, starting with a quick _thank you for everything,_ _Rowena_ under his breath, as he opened the door to the Empty. Michael running at Chuck, jaw set, pushing his father into the portal. Jack's eyes glowed gold as they searched along the invisible strings of the void, untangling them, burning all the energy in the occultum inside him to set it right. Sending everyone back to sleep, filling their dreams with sweetness instead of regret. He smiled. This was what he was made for: creating peace.

In the Empty, there was nothing but space. Nothing keeping Chuck and Amara together any longer. They were asleep, like everything else in this place. Their bodies split apart on the floor that looked like a dizzying drop into darkness, knees knocking together, ankles crossed. Dean closed his eyes and called to Amara to wake her. _I'm sorry. I know now what you were trying to show me. There's one last thing._

She blinked her eyes open. This darkness wasn’t her darkness, but it felt more like home. Dean handed her Becky's script. "Read this to your brother while he sleeps. I think...I think it could make him a better man. If not, it might at least surprise him.” 

The portal was closing, and the flutters of daylight it let through were fading away into nothingness.

"Go without me, Sammy. I have to find him. It’s Cas." 

And Sam let him go, his gut twisting, because after so long, hadn't they learned that lesson? He shepherded out Jack and Michael and, with one last glance over his shoulder, stepped through. His first breath of air in this new world of free will was sharp and cold without his brother, but it carried possibility, too.

Dean called out to Cas with all his heart to wake him. He walked for God knows how long, drawing on the same reserves of determination he used to fight his way through Purgatory. When he found him, surrounded by inky blackness, Cas was blinking his blue eyes open, too stunned to speak when Dean picks him up and carried him in his arms, one hand clasped tight enough to bruise round his shoulder.

The portal was closed. Amara held her brother's head in her lap. All around her, soot-gray vines and flowers grew apace, and from somewhere below he could hear water flowing. He stopped short. She was making her own garden. 

Prayer was a sign of faith. He fell to his knees and closed his eyes before her. One word. “Please.” 

He squinted one eye open. She considered him with those doe’s eyes, so unbefitting cosmic darkness, and understood. She blew a kiss to him, and as it landed he and Cas were spinning down to earth like falling stars, crashing through the roof of an old barn so hard Dean saw sparks fly behind his eyelids. Cas landed under him, saving him from a broken spine or worse. In the wreckage, they were battered and sprained in places, their coats and shirts torn by the rafters on the way down. Blood glittered behind those tears. It was raining in the barn, summer rain like a miracle, the best thing Dean had ever tasted.

"Hello, Dean," Cas said. His face was gentle but guarded. He was waiting.

Dean buried his head against Cas' chest where he plunged a dagger all those years ago and sobbed silently. "You sacrificed yourself for me. And you shouldn't have." Sensing Cas was about to speak from the rise of his chest, Dean thumped his shoulder. "Not because I don't deserve it. You...you showed me I do. An angel of the lord, in love with me, who’da thunk it."

"I'm not much of an angel," Cas said. The gravel in his voice went so soft sometimes. 

"Shut up. You were the only angel who loved this world. You did what God himself couldn't do. If you think that’s not _awe_ some, in exactly what that word used to mean, I don’t know what to do with you." 

Cas fell silent. His eyes were starting to shine. 

"Don't you know I can't live without you? I need you, Cas. I never thought you could...feel those feelings for anyone. Not until you were gone. And then I knew I'd been feeling the same way for years, years and I never –" Dean stopped short, seeing Cas flinch at the regret in his voice. "Listen. I'm not good with words. And I've done wrong to you sometimes, I know it. But you changed me. You've been saving me, all these years, watching over me. And if you’ll come home, one last time, I want to spend the rest of my life proving to you that you can have what you want. That I love you." 

* * *

They bandaged one another up slow and quiet at the Bunker. They kissed. Dean was shaky, unable to believe it was really happening, and Castiel was slow and sure, like he might believe in destiny despite everything. They started living. 

Sam drove to Eileen's the second he's welcomed them home and made sure they're okay. Jack left to rebuild Heaven: to grow up like every child does. Cas helped him, his powers returning, the beat of wings in the bunker always announcing his return. Castiel, self-hating angel of Thursday, became heaven's new architect. Jack came home on the weekends. Sometimes he answered prayers, or just sat for hours in a park, letting himself become every one of the raindrops. The four of them bounced between shady motel rooms, never giving up on saving people. Between heaven and Rowena's new hell, between their separate lives and days on the beach watching the ocean. Watching the world they saved. They made their own families, and fought tooth and claw for them. When the end finally came, it was a blaze of glory, but one that never could have cast light without love as its fuel. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Five things I know. 
> 
> 1\. Our boys deserved a better ending to their story.  
> 2\. Nevertheless, the message of Supernatural, and of Destiel, was more than the ending. Don’t lose that.  
> 3\. I will always look up to Castiel.  
> 4\. Dean Winchester loves Cas, and never would have let him go.  
> 5\. Without you, I wouldn’t be writing like I am today. Short stories, maybe getting a deal to get my first novella published, believing in myself. You changed me. Thank you for everyone who let my stories move you, and for all the words of encouragement and inspiration along the way: I’ll truly never forget it.


End file.
